Tuesday, August 22, 2017

I am absolutely delighted to be curating Portland, Oregon’s FIRST EVER major exhibition of original hand-painted horror movie posters from Ghana!

ONE WEEK ONLY!

October 20 through October 27, 2017

The Fierce Ghost Eats Human Region: Horror Movie Paintings From Ghana is a spectacular celebration of original paintings curated by Dennis Dread and Brian Chankin of Chicago’s Deadly Prey Gallery, that focuses on the more grotesque fringes of the much touted Ghanaian movie poster movement. Vampires! Cannibals! Ghosts! Skulls! Demons! Barbarians! Telepathic Snakes! Bodily Dismemberment! Floating Heads! Killer Dolls! Metastatic Musculature! Jason Taking Manhunte (no, not Manhattan...Manhunte)! These are MASSIVE original hand-painted posters from West Africa (NO PRINTS!) and all will be available for immediate sale. Come experience the macabre splendor of Ghanaian horror at its hallucinatory heights!

During the mid 1980s, as affordable videocassette technology became available in larger cities across West Africa, resourceful entrepreneurs launched mobile “pop-up” cinemas throughout the rural and coastal villages of Ghana where reliable electricity was still a somewhat sparse commodity. Armed with little more than portable gas-powered generators and a stack of VHS tapes, traveling new jack “barkers” delivered Western genre films to remote outposts along the Gulf of Guinea to the delight of cheering audiences who had yet to experience the chiseled machismo of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone or the massive Aqua Netted coifs of 80s femininity. These immensely popular short run open-air screenings required commanding and titillating advertising and, in lieu of neon, an incredible new art movement of wildly expressive one-sheet marquee posters soon exploded onto the cultural landscape. Hand-painted on sewn together flour sack canvases, these posters were utilitarian and disposable by design, but soon caught the attention of fine art collectors such as Ernie Wolfe III, author of the definitive “golden age” collections Extreme Canvas and Extreme Canvas 2, who recognized their visionary potency and sheer awe-inspiring surreality. By the late 90s, as digital print technology and advances in the nation’s infrastructure emerged, these traveling DIY cinema clubs were rendered obsolete. But it was too late! Younger Ghanaian artists who had come of age during the writhing chromatic glory of first wave movie poster masters such as Mr. Brew, Leonardo, Kofi “Death As Wonder” Kuwornu, D.A. "Bright" Obens, and E.A. “Heavy” Jeaurs had already become possessed and began creating their own massive paintings in earnest devotion and winking homage. And so the incendiary movement of beautiful Ghanaian movie paintings marches on…

Join us on October 20 for the Opening Reception at Portland's Cobra Lounge from 7pm-10pm, featuring a live performance by Ensorcelling the Minotaur (Roger Forbish of Deathcharge conjuring the ghost of Robert Moog) and yours truly weaving a wyrd sonic spell of horror movie soundtracks, fuzzed-out pan-African psych and heavy acid rock, man! You won’t want to miss this. Trust me.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Wyrd War and Rose City Strip join forces to deliver Portland's heaviest heavy metal event of 2017! And it's FREE! Canadian heavy metal legend Jon Mikl THOR returns to the City of Roses on the wings of his latest odd opus Beyond the Pain Barrier with special support from Lucifer's full throttle female-fronted Louisville execution squad SAVAGE MASTER and Portland's very own bastard sons of Phil Lynott and Kate De Lombaert ACID WASH! Some heads are gonna roll, Portland.